With different areas of focus like Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality, IOT, Smart Manufacturing, Fintech, the Cloud, and more, GITEX this year puts data protection at the forefront of the visitors’ agenda, alongside other leading-edge technologies. The reason is clear: data protection can’t be an afterthought. It’s at the core of the digital transformation that companies around the globe are currently undertaking.

Data is the lifeline of businesses of all sizes. Today’s companies need to protect themselves against data loss and downtime, which can happen as a result of human error, hardware failure, software corruption, natural disasters, or ransomware. This year, WannaCry and Petya attacks, just to name the most prominent ones, dramatically impacted the ability of some UK NHS hospitals to care for their patients. The attacks also had severe consequences for some car manufacturers, who were forced to shut down some of their factories, resulting in losses of hundreds of thousands of euros per day.

There is no simple solution for dealing with ransomware. The best approach might be one that deploys multiple layers of protection. This approach has to incorporate education and training of staff, keeping network and endpoint security solutions updated, and regular patching of software. Finally, protection must include a robust and regularly tested disaster recovery (DR) plan that relies on backup and recovery solutions as well as on next-generation storage.

A company’s data is its most valuable asset. It’s not an overstatement to say that without data, there is simply no business. Regular backups are the foundation of any organization’s DR plan. However, companies of all sizes must understand that these backups have no value if they cannot restore quickly and easily when hit by hardware failure, a ransomware attack or any other of the many possible disasters. Fully protecting your business involves getting copies of these backups offsite. One great option is to replicate backups to a purpose-built disaster recovery cloud. Having their backups in the cloud allows organizations to literally flip a switch and fail over to a secondary network that runs in the cloud in an instant.

At GITEX this year, attendees will have the opportunity to learn about the StorageCraft®Recovery Solution™ that gives businesses all the tools they need to back up systems, applications and data. The solution lets organizations replicate their backups, either onsite or in the cloud. Moreover, businesses can restore everything from a single file or folder to complete systems throughout their networks, whether they’re virtual or physical, while still meeting any compliance requirements.

Speaking of compliance, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will go into effect in May 2018. It will directly affect companies of all sizes, in all regions including the Middle East, and in all industries that hold the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of EU citizens. The penalties for non-compliance are substantial, the primary effect of which will be to raise data protection as a business risk directly into the boardroom. It is also important to know that included in Article 17 of the GDPR, the right to erasure—or right to be forgotten—states that in certain circumstances, an individual can submit a request to the data controller to have personal information erased or to prevent further processing of that data. This will potentially make life very difficult for organizations relying on legacy storage solutions.

With next-generation object-based storage (OBS) literally all kinds of data—documents, audio or video files, images or photos, or other unstructured data—are stored as single objects. Metadata is also associated with each object and provides descriptive information about the object and the data itself. This eliminates the need for a hierarchical structure and simplifies access by placing everything in a flat address space. A unique identifier assigned to each object makes it easier to index and retrieve data, like PII, or find a specific object.

To offer affordable and high-performing solutions, StorageCraft has reimagined storage with OneBlox, the industry’s first all-flash scale-out object-based appliance that is accessible with NFS and SMB network protocols for organizations of all sizes and optimized for virtual environments. It allows companies to utilize an affordable cloud-managed solution with leading-edge enterprise features, and it will be demoed at GITEX.

We are looking forward to seeing you next week at GITEX. Make sure to stop by the StorageCraft demo area on the Redington stand, in Booth E4-30 in Hall 4 and Booth SM-3 in the Skeikh Maktoum Halls.

As International Product Marketing Director at StorageCraft, Mr. Florian Malecki drives the development of the data protection and storage solutions. His key responsibilities include messaging, positioning and the evangelization of StorageCraft data protection and scale-out storage solutions to customers, partners, media and industry analysts. Prior to joining StorageCraft, Mr. Malecki worked in senior roles at SonicWall, Dell, Aventail, ClearSwift, Omgeo, Lucent Technologies and Air Products. He earned a Master’s degree in Business, Marketing and Technology from École Supérieure des Affaires et des Technologies, France.

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This online digest is dedicated to exploring BDR solutions and technology relevant to MSPs, VARs, and IT professionals.

The Recovery Zone is brought to you by StorageCraft, a company that has been producing software solutions for backup, disaster recovery, system migration, virtualization, and data protection for servers, desktops, and laptops since 2003.